Identification of the Areas of Students Difficulties in Chemistry Curriculum at the Secondary School Level

This study focused on identification of difficult chemistry topics on the secondary school curriculum. Three
research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data
from fifty students by simple random sampling technique. Frequency and mean were used to answer the
research questions. The results obtained indicated that eight topics out of eighteen topics listed in the
chemistry curriculum are difficult. The results also revealed that there is a relationship between the students’
interests and the topics they considered difficult and that there is a significant difference between the topics
considered difficult by the male and female students. Based on the findings of this study, the researcher made
a number of recommendations, including; training and refresher courses for chemistry teachers, employment
of professionally qualified chemistry teachers, use of discovery approach in teaching chemistry, among
others.